Canadian Company Creates SmallSat to Fight Climate Change

With climate change being a focus of the new Liberal government the timing of a new player in the Earth Observation, climate change space couldn’t be better. GHGSat, a new company based out of Montreal announced yesterday that it’s small demonstration satellite has completed testing and is being prepared for launch in April on an Indian rocket.

The small satellite called CLAIRE is outfitted with sensors that will enable it to measure greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities around the world.
According to GHGSat “Industrial site operators worldwide must increasingly consider the cost of their greenhouse gas emissions. In order to manage and ultimately reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, industrial site operators need the best possible measurements, at the lowest possible cost. GHGSat will serve this need using innovative satellite-based remote sensing technology, designed to monitor emissions from individual industrial facilities in industries such as oil & gas, power generation, mining and waste management.”
The company recently completed their final round of testing of the demonstration satellite including “thermal vacuum tests to simulate the temperature cycling and vacuum environment typical of low Earth orbit, as well as vibration tests to simulate the loads that the satellite will experience during launch.”
“All systems go! This milestone is the culmination of two years of intense effort by a team of Canadian engineers and scientists,” said Stéphane Germain, President of GHGSat. “GHGSat is bringing technological innovation in the aerospace industry to the fight against climate change.”
The satellite was developed with a team of partners that included Xiphos Technologies, the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, and MPB Communications. The company also received help from the Boeing Company who provided expertise in systems engineering and space vehicle design and integration.
Along with this announcement, GHGSat announced a Kickstarter campaign to raise $100,000. They’ve already raised money to develop, build, test, and launch CLAIRE would like additional funding to increase the number of demonstrations they can do. Ultimately they are looking to raise $1 million to fund a commercial version of CLAIRE.
– More information on GHSSat.
– The CLAIRE Kickstarter campaign.Note: SpaceRef is a sponsor of the upcoming Canadian SmallSat Symposium (https://smallsat.ca) in Toronto, February 2-3, 2016 in Toronto. Learn more and join us.

About Marc Boucher

Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor & publisher. He is the founder of SpaceRef Canada Interactive Inc, CEO and co-founder of SpaceRef U.S., advisor and co-founder of the Canadian Space Commerce Association, and director and co-founder of MaxQ Accelerator Inc. Previously he was the founder of Maple Square, Canada's first internet directory and search engine which he sold.

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